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Argh fuck bike thieves

The stolen bike chop shop under the freeway: we've all seen it, we all hate it—and they've been operating in broad daylight with impunity for years. Fortunately, thanks to Meredith Obendorfer and @SFPDBikeTheft, the operation has been (finally) taken down.

Meredith fills us in:

On my ride to work yesterday, I saw a bicycle “chop shop” in its usual operating spot along 13th Street [at Mission], underneath the freeway. Fired up by the recent theft of my beloved mountain bike, I stopped and pulled out my phone to take a picture of the scums at work. While it was a potentially dangerous situation, I figured… if they chase me, what are they going to do, outsprint me?

I snapped a couple photos, gave the guy yelling at me the middle finger, rode away and took to the Interwebs. I tweeted out a picture, notifying @SFPDBikeTheft (which as you might now, is manned by an SFPD officer who has been advocating for SF cyclists with stolen bicycles.)

By 6pm yesterday evening, I received the following tweets in return from @SFPDBikeTheft, as well as from SFPD Mission Station, informing me that the area had been cleared up:

We all know better than to leave a bike unlocked while it's perched atop a Muni bus's bike rack—especially while the bus is creeping down Market Street—but allow Doug's experience serve as a cautionary tale in case anyone has been lulled into a false sense of security:

I was enjoying some after work drinks on Election Night when I decided I had one too many to safely ride my bike home. I put my bike on the front rack of an outbound #71 at Market and 2nd, and took a seat on the front of the bus. I was on the sixth seat back, and had a decent view of my bike. The next stop was Stockton and we pulled up to a red light. As people were boarding the bus I had my head down until the driver called out that someone was taking my bike. By the time I stood up my bike was gone. I ran off the bus and headed back down Market assuming the thief was riding off in that direction but I couldn’t see anything among the lights of Market Street rush hour traffic.